From a letter to the editor by board member Chris Gavaler:

 

How “huge” was the GOP win?
This isn’t a political question. It’s a mathematical one. Rank all the presidential elections of the last 60 years by the winner’s vote percentage. Only two break 60 percent:
1964, Johnson: 61.1%, by 16 million votes; and 1972, Nixon: 60.7%, by 18 million votes. Nixon won by more votes but a smaller percentage than Johnson.
Most fall in the 50s percentile range:
        1976, Carter: 50.1%, +1.7 million votes 984, Reagan: 58.8%, by 17 million votes
        1980, Reagan*: 50.7%, by 7.5 million votes over Carter (Anderson with 5.7 million votes)1988, Bush: 53.4%, by 7 million votes
        2008, Obama: 52.9%, by 9.5 million votes
        2020, Biden: 51.3%, by 7 million votes
        2012, Obama: 51.1%, by 5 million votes
        2004, Bush: 50.7%, by 3 million votes
   
Reagan’s first election needs an asterisk because if you combine Carter and the third-party candidate, Reagan’s vote count advantage drops to 1.8 million, barely above Carter’s from the previous election. But also note that Reagan’s vote count advantage from his second election is above Johnson and Nixon, though his percentile isn’t.
 

Now for the below 50 percentile winners:
        2024, Trump: 49.8%, +2.3 million votes
       1996, Clinton*: 49.2%, +8.2 million votes above Dole (Perot with 8 million votes)
 

Clinton’s second election needs an asterisk because his vote count advantage drops to .2 if Dole and the third-party candidate are combined, making Clinton the thinnest majority winner of the last 60 years.
 

The next two presidents are non-majority winners. They both lost the popular vote:
        2000, Bush: 47.9%, -.5 million votes
        2016, Trump: 46.1%, -2.9 million votes
 

And the bottom two are plurality (rather than majority) winners due to the two historically strongest third-party candidates:
          1968, Nixon: 43.4%, +5 million votes above Humphrey (Wallace with 9.9 million votes)
          1992, Clinton: 43%, 5.8 million votes above Bush (Perot with 19.7 million votes)
 

So of the last 16 elections, Trump is at number 11: the smallest majority winner of two-candidate races in the last 60 years.

 

Of the seven presidential races of the 21st century, he beat only his own and Bush’s popular-vote losing victories.

 

2024 marks no mandate, no major electoral shift. Historically, Trump’s victory is the smallest of potatoes.